The Away Game
by Dollybigmomma
Summary: Bella and Edward became friends when they were very young, commiserating over their traumatic home lives filled with abuse. In order to deal with the pain they must endure, Edward teaches Bella The Away Game, where life is good and they're loved, even if only in their imagination. Child abuse mentioned but not graphically.


**WARNING – DARK THEME, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK**

**Remember to check my profile for the link to the picture that inspired this insanity. It's basically a family portrait, but the creepy-looking father has an even creepier-looking ventriloquist dummy I called Mikey, who is sitting on his one knee and staring at a little girl on the other. Yeah, Mikey is just CREEPY!**

**THE AWAY GAME**

By Dollybigmomma

Rated M+ for strong subject matter

I'd once heard someone say that happiness was a state of mind, something you could even choose if you were of a mind to do so. They lied. I didn't ever remember being happy, not until I met Edward, anyway. All I ever remembered was Mikey. Mikey was bad. He liked to do things that hurt, and he scared me.

I hated Mikey.

I was only two the first time Mikey came into my room at night. He always came with my stepfather, Phil. Mikey went to work with Phil after dinner, and they didn't come home until very late, after my mom and I were already in bed. Mom said that people thought Mikey was funny and paid lots of money to see him and Phil, and we should have been grateful we had him. I didn't understand that.

Phil was the love of my mother's life. She left my real dad, Charlie, before he ever knew she was pregnant, so he never knew about me. I didn't even learn about him until I was older, until after…

When I was almost five, my mom died of a fatal fall down the stairs of our house. Her neck was broken. I remembered hearing her arguing with Phil right before it happened, but being so young, I really didn't know to tell the police about it. It had started happening all the time, so it wasn't anything I wasn't used to. Besides, Phil had said it was an accident.

Phil had adopted me and given me his last name, so I was left with him after my mom was gone. Him and Mikey. Mikey insisted I sleep with him and Phil after that, and the things Mikey had been doing to me started happening every night. I buried my head under the pillows and cried. Sometimes I screamed from the pain.

When I was five, I started school. That was where I met Edward. He was sitting alone behind the kickball screen, playing with the blades of tall grass growing there. He sat with a large backpack next to him, and I asked him about it. He said he kept everything he owned in it, so the other kids wouldn't steal what little he had left from his mom, who had died. He didn't know who his dad was. He taught me how to braid that day with some of the longer blades of grass. He was a grade ahead of me and lived in the Newton's foster home a street over from my house. He said there was no one like Mikey in his house, but he had two older foster brothers named James and Laurent who did some of the same things to him as Mikey did to me. Like Mikey, James and Laurent told him they would hurt him worse or even kill him if he told anyone what they were doing. He believed them, like I believed Mikey. I didn't want to hurt any worse, so I kept quiet, as did Edward.

He hated them as much as I hated Mikey.

Edward taught me a game he played when James and Laurent were hurting him. He called it the "away game." He pretended he was away from them, living in a place where he was loved and wanted, where nobody hurt him. "I can go there in my head, and it doesn't hurt so much, at least some of the time. Sometimes, though, what they do is in my face, and they make me keep my eyes open and watch, so it's harder then," he said quietly. I knew what he meant.

By the time I was nine, my chest had already bulged out to a B cup, and I had started bleeding regularly. This wasn't so bad, because for those few days, Mikey left me alone, and I got to sleep in my own bed. Phil made me wear big sweatshirts to school, so nobody could see my chest, not that he had to worry. To the teachers, I was invisible. I was quiet, and there were plenty of other kids who weren't, so I went unnoticed in the shuffle. I was still hiding my head under the pillows when Phil would drag me back to his room, but at least I had kind of gotten used to what Mikey was doing, so it didn't hurt as much.

That was until I turned eleven, and then Mikey started lying next to me while Phil took over. I learned to play the away game for all I was worth then. The first time this happened, I could barely walk the next day. Edward noticed.

"What's the matter, Bella?"

I couldn't say anything. Phil had figured out that Edward was my friend, and he said he would kill him and bury him in the backyard under the shed if I talked. I somehow knew he would do it, too, so I lied and said I had fallen down and hurt myself. I didn't think Edward believed me, but he understood and didn't ask any more questions.

By the time I was thirteen, Mikey was doing really well with Phil at his job at the nightclubs, so they were gone overnight a lot more, traveling from city to city. They left me home alone, and I loved it. Sometimes, Edward would sneak out of his foster house and come over and stay with me. On those nights, we both slept better than we ever did otherwise. We always slept on the sofa sleeper in the living room, because I didn't want to be in the same room where I had to sleep when Phil was home.

Since Phil was fond of throwing things away that meant something to me, I had stashed a lot of my mom's stuff I had managed to hide from him in what I thought were safe places, but Phil got industrious one Sunday and found it all, dragging it out and putting it out for charity, along with her old rolling suitcases full of her clothes and personal stuff I had hidden in the attic, garage and basement. He boxed everything up like it was nothing, sitting it on the front porch to be collected.

After Phil left for the day, Edward helped me drag the boxes and suitcases deep into the thick woods behind our subdivision. We hid it all in a makeshift clubhouse he had built next to a small stream out of scrap lumber he'd salvaged from a huge demolished fence down the street, using some thick plastic tarps, a hammer and a hand saw he had pilfered from the Newton's house. He was good with his hands and the tools, so it was actually pretty decent. He reused the nails from the fence, and even made a table, a couple of benches, and a raised bunk. We both snuck backpacks full of food and candles out there, and Edward raided Mr. Newton's camping gear for a mess kit, a camp stove and a sleeping bag. We spent hours hiding there and talking, looking through my mother's photo albums and books, sharing with each other what we were dealing with at home, as much as we dared.

I was fourteen and Edward was just a two days away from his sixteenth birthday, when he finally said he'd had enough. After a night where James and Laurent had been particularly rough with him, Edward could hardly sit. They were just months from turning eighteen themselves and leaving the foster home, but they had promised to make every day they had left with Edward count. When they weren't going at each other, they still went after Edward, sometimes both at once now. He suggested we be brave and talk to the counselor and his caseworker about what was happening to us the next morning. I hesitantly agreed.

Mr. Yorkie was the counselor at school, and we learned after we talked to him that he was one of Phil's best friends. We also figured out they were very good friends with Edward's foster dad, Mr. Newton, as well as Mr. Crowley, who was Edward's caseworker. We lived in a very small town, so it shouldn't have been all that surprising. They didn't believe us and called Edward a troublemaker, accusing him of defaming two upstanding citizens who had served the community diligently for years.

We were sent to wait outside the office, and we could hear Mr. Yorkie call Mr. Newton, as the speakerphone was loud. Mr. Newton said they should send Edward off to a military-type disciplinary school for lying, because he didn't want him back. They made the arrangements to have Edward picked up the next day, and then we overheard them say they were going to talk to Phil about what I had said and warn him that I was also being a troublemaker. We both knew that would be deadly. As quickly and inconspicuously as we could, we slipped out of the back door of the school, bolting to the parking lot, where Edward quickly hotwired James' old car he'd recently won in a craps game. We hurried to the clubhouse, grabbed everything we had stashed there, and then we ran.


End file.
